Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

Doesn't seem in the least outrageous to the sane among us. It puts Democrats in the "sane" category and will tend to focus a beacon on the Republicans' insanity and extremism -- their inability to act as a genuine political party with a talent for negotiation. Intransigence, particularly in a matter as important as shared responsibility for a broken economy, is no longer as popular as it once was.

Democrats want to take the offensive and propose higher tax rates for millionaires, companies that move factories overseas and wealthy people who make charitable contributions.

Senior lawmakers say the debate over spending levels for the rest of 2011 is too far along to begin insisting that a six-month stopgap include tax increases to reduce the $1.6 trillion deficit.

But they say tax policy changes should be part of the debate over the 2012 budget. That debate will kick off next week when House Republicans are expected to introduce their 2012 spending plan. ...The Hill

Sounds almost too sane for Washington and for Republicans, doesn't it!

Eighty six years after the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial opened Tennessee classrooms to the teaching of evolution, the state House is trying to slam the door shut again. Tennessee’s House Education Committee approved a bill Tuesday in the name of “academic freedom,” but in reality, it is a thinly veiled attempt to curtail the teaching of evolution. ...Think Progress

That "odd" alliance goes way back to version 1.2 of the tea party movement -- as it quickly morphed from "grass roots" movement (only the first few months of its existence) to being an angry, white greed machine, a corporate tool with opportunistic ties to the Koch brothers' "Americans for Prosperity." So we're supposed to be surprised it is increasingly coupled with lobbyists?

... A Tea Party group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.

Last fall, the institute’s president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington’s proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain’s colonial trade policies in 1776.

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government. ...NYT

Just caught on to that, Times? The story gets worse. International influence on American politics is a done deal, and the tea party movement is acting as facilitator.

Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute’s work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company’s consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.

All of this has roots in the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision. The tea party's "Institute for Liberty" has no obligation, as a "non-profit," to reveals where its money comes from.

“If you can spend as much money as you want and remain anonymous, then it doesn’t matter if you’re an overseas company or the Koch brothers, you pay the same network of anti-regulatory front groups,” said Scott Paul, director of Greenpeace’s forest campaign.

With the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009, the institute, by then under Mr. Langer, helped inject the issue into the national dialogue, and soon signs equating net neutrality with government oppression became a staple at Tea Party rallies.

Giffords' supporters are already planning, behind the scenes, her run for Jon Kyl's seat in 2012. Kyl announced his retirement some time back.

... These supporters say they do not want to get too far ahead of themselves, and make clear that Ms. Giffords, who was shot in the head, is still relearning basic tasks and might emerge from the hospital with neither the same political abilities nor aspirations that she had before. And publicly, her closest aides say the only thing they care about is her health.

“Our focus is on her recovery and what comes after that comes after that,” said Pia Carusone, Ms. Giffords’s chief of staff.

Despite such protestations, several of Ms. Giffords’s longtime aides are whispering behind the scenes that she just might recover in time to run for the seat that Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, is vacating next year.

While it might be wishful thinking, Ms. Giffords’s noncampaign is already having a major effect on Arizona politics; other prospective Democratic candidates say they feel compelled not to jump in unless she bows out, allowing Republicans to get a head start organizing their campaigns... NYT

Considerable concern has been shown in these pages about the apparent absence of "intelligence on the ground" in Libya. Finally the word is out that Central Intelligence has "been inserted." MI6 has been in there for a while.

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said. ...NYT

American operatives have at least two missions. Assess the rebels and their government opposition. And provide openings for defections from Qaddafi's military. Then implement a presidential order, already signed, to provide arms to the rebels.

NPR has a full report on the defection of Qaddafi's foreign minister -- a blow to the Qaddafi's crumbling support -- and on the people Qaddafi "disappeared."

Why didn't America have intelligence operatives inside Libya? They were taken out as soon as Qaddafi agreed to give up his nuclear ambitions in 2003.

Americans are getting more negative about the Tea Party with nearly 50% saying in a new poll that they have an unfavorable view of the anti-tax movement.

About 1 in 5 adults or 47% say they view the Tea Party in the same negative light as the Democratic and Republican parties, according to the CNN/Opinion Research survey. The Tea Party numbers are up 21 percentage points from January 2010.

The poll finds 32% of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party, down five points from December, shortly after movement supporters helped elect a GOP majority in the U.S. House. ...USAToday